Our story so far: After much backing and forthing, we found a reasonably affordable way to construct an extra-large custom shower in our master bathroom in our church conversion, but we couldn’t put away our shopping list yet.

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Ah, the fixtures.

I wanted a rainfall shower head. I naively believed that’s how they were sold: Shower head, rainfall; Quantity: One.

Um, no.

One needs valves. They’re the parts you can’t see, but if you don’t have them, you don’t have things like water pressure or temperature control. Then you need something called “valve trim.” This the knob that turns on the water.

Then you need the shower head. But sometimes you might also need a shower head arm and a shower head flange.

Naturally, each of these parts has its own price.

Oh, and you’re not done yet. Now you choose a style. And don’t forget the finish: brass, copper, bronze, chrome—oh, not so fast—would you like that in polished, brushed, matte?

Tyler chose a distinctive Kohler bathtub faucet for the upstairs bath but we went with the “contractor special” for the shower up there. For the master bathroom, we also considered Kohler, a manufacturer based in what was now our home state of Wisconsin, but in the end we went with polished chrome Moen fixtures. I was reading everywhere that brass was new and trendy, but I hated brass; polished chrome would look clean, be durable and would make it easy to find accessories and other fixtures.

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Tomorrow: Why brass is crass. And other judgy opinions from the peanut gallery. Read it here.